Hello and welcome to The Marketing Blog. My name is Michael Fleischner and this blog has been developed to share my more than 14 years of Marketing experience with anyone interested in learning more about marketing or Internet marketing. The Marketing Blog markets marketing simple and covers all aspects of marketing with a particular focus on internet marketing.

Friday, September 21, 2012

The most important information that you can take from your website is the Conversion optimization rate. It is all about taking the traffic that comes to your site and converting them into solid customers. It can be difficult to understand at first, and you may feel that a lot of useless information is provided but the truth is that it is necessary information for helping your website to succeed.

It can be confusing to try and understand the difference between SEO and CO, but there is a very distinct difference. SEO is the type of marketing that is done in order to drive traffic to your site. Traffic is important for the more people that come to your site the more likely you are to get a customer. CO is the concentration of taking that traffic and converting them into customers.Guests are people that are sent to your website by referral, PPC, organic search engine listing, or by searching directly for your company. A guest is someone that just comes by the site and maybe checks out a couple of things, but does not commit to purchasing. These guests are very common, and while it is great to have a decent amount of guests it is much better to have customers, and this is when CO comes into play. The most important part of CO is trying to find the niche the will help convert your guests into customers.There are several questions that you will need to answer in order to help concentrate your efforts in the right area:--How often does a guest decide to purchase?--Where did that guest come from or was referred from?--Was the cost for the marketing worth the amount of referrals or traffic?--Where did the guests go and visit once they accessed your site?--What were the guests viewing when they left your site and did not become a customer?It may seem like these could be rather easy questions to answer, but the truth is that a lot of companies that fail in their internet marketing campaigns are often ignoring the answers to these questions. There are specific reasons for why it is important to take your time and weigh all of your options when it comes to internet marketing and here are a few examples:Example 1:Most companies do not start from scratch with their marketing plans. They tend to take a look at what their competitors have done and build on their successes while trying to avoid their failures. You may notice that just because you choose to try and duplicate a competitor’s successful marketing it may not always work out the same for your company.A lot of internet marketing has to do with trial and error. Most companies start out with casting a large net to try and catch as many fishes as possible. Then once they have a solid stock of fishes take a look at your strategy and begin to narrow down your tactics so you only attract the most attractive fish. The reasoning behind these tactics is simple. You first want to help build a name for your company, and then once you have a solid set of traffic concentrate on getting those people to purchase from your company.Example 2:It is important to keep an eye on where the most solid traffic is coming from and how to make those people customers. A certain type of marketing, such as referrals, could seem like a great way to bring in traffic. The only problem is that just because a lot of traffic comes from that area does not mean that it is quality traffic that you are receiving.You will want to concentrate your efforts on an area where you not only receive a lot of traffic, but you also receive a lot of traffic that will turn into customers. It may seem expensive to invest in pay per click advertising, but when you look at the numbers if you receive a great deal of traffic that converts into customers than it is probably a smart decision to keep it.Example 3:Track all traffic. It is very easy to think that you should focus all of your effort into one category, such as organic listing. The only problem is that you may receive a decent amount of business from PPC advertising as well. Then you will want to weigh out the cost versus benefit ratio. PPC advertising is something you have to pay for every single time someone comes to your site. Take the amount of money you spend and compare it to the amount of money that you make off of those customers. More is not always better, if you are spending more money than you are making then it is probably a better idea to concentrate your efforts somewhere else.The bottom line is that if you are trying to make a successful business online than it is important to look at the entire picture and not just the little bits and pieces that catch your attention.

Guest post provided by DiscoverTec CEO Donny Lamey. DiscoverTec is a web design, web development and web hosting solution company located in Jacksonville, Florida.